An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

“It was that memorable day, in the first summer of the late war, when our navy engaged the Dutch; a day wherein the two most mighty and best appointed fleets which any age had ever seen disputed the command of the greater half of the globe, the commerce of nations, and the riches of the universe.”

The opening sentence of the essay gives some indication of the gravity of the exchange to follow: The discussion about the merits of modern English writers and the state of the English theater is taking place while a battle for naval superiority is waged. England’s wars with the Dutch concerned trade routes and commercial enterprises; the success of England in these endeavors paved the way for an empire spanning most of the globe. Dryden, as Neander, is the “new man” overseeing and undergirding this expansion of power; aesthetic prominence and political dominance are symbolically conjoined.

“But my comfort is if we are overcome it will be only by our own countrymen; and if we yield to them [the ancients] in this one part of poesy, we more surpass them in all the other.”

In a continuation of the above, the discussion is one in which national reputation is at stake. After the humiliations of civil war and the repressions of Puritan rule, the English must reassert their literary superiority. Eugenius argues that, with regard to poetry, the English can only be surpassed by the English. He goes on to assert that “the drama is wholly ours” (154). Thus, from poesy to drama to dramatic poesy, the English have conquered.

“We have added nothing of our own, except we have the confidence to say our wit is better; of which none boast in this our age but such as understand not theirs.”

In contradiction to Eugenius’s assertions, Crites argues in favor of the ancients here suggesting that only those who do not understand the ancients would suggest they were relatively lacking in